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Fun on Path of Exile

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 1:26 am
by Ian
I've been doing tests with the cast on critical strike support gem lately and I have been having quite a bit of fun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS3RatsaLfY

I've looked into most abilities, but so far I've been using discharge. I also use cold snap + concentrated effect for a single target ability in this video, which puts out slightly more dps for a loss of survivability (no life leech, I don't own any 5L or 6L armor pieces).

I can maintain 87% resists (can easily be 88% with one more point in my tree) and 15,000 armor almost always during dangerous combat. This gives me quite a bit of survivability. Unfortunately I can only use this for general farming. Big bosses just don't melt fast enough with a 4L Voll's Protector, and even elemental resistant rare mobs give me trouble unless they're in the center of a group.

I will be doing tests with other abilities (such as using spectral throw in place of cyclone, and using firestorm in place of discharge). There seems to be a lot of potential in this.

Keystones taken:
Vaal Pact
Eldritch Battery
Iron Reflexes

I'm also working on a tree based from the Scion that uses blood magic in place of eldritch battery, and also does not get iron reflexes. While running grace + iron reflexes is nice, it seems unnecessary. Trying to run cyclone off of mana is very difficult, and I can often run out of mana. This is especially true when I use Voll's Protector because of its huge mana reduction. Not having to take mana nodes would be very helpful. With the blood magic setup, I also get some useful Marauder nodes (+2% Max Resists and -30% Critical Strike Damage Taken). Getting frozen can kill you ;).

Re: Fun on Path of Exile

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 5:01 am
by 3ICE
Those defenses! Is this on hardcore? At 1:00 you dropped to 400 health.

I was about to complain about mobility but then I saw 3:00.

Why do I frequently see people, not just you, post unlisted videos on YouTube? I'd be proud of my work and publish it right away.

My build is also in this bad place: Good for farming, weak against some map bosses.

Re: Fun on Path of Exile

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:29 pm
by Ian
This isn't hardcore, but the build is viable on hardcore. Dropping to that life is uncommon, but I tend to be flippant in farming runs. If I can find a reasonably high mob density (3+), I can almost instantly leech my entire life pool back.

Since cyclone is being used, the main issue is lightning thorns. With vaal pact this becomes less of an issue. The only problem with vaal pact is that it's so far away on a Witch tree. That's why I made a Scion tree (which is more efficient anyway in the end). I also tried this with a Marauder, but getting into the Witch/Shadow area was a pain and didn't have quite as many benefits as a Scion.

If I can manage a way to use determination with grace (more mana is needed to run clarity with those two), I'll get another hefty armor boost. That's only going to be possible in the end-game though (unless I start taking more reduced mana reservation nodes and more mana% nodes). The fact that it's possible at all is something wonderful to look forward to.

Here's my tree (lvl 68) if you're interested:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skil ... Cg704otSo4

I'm very aware that some points have been wasted as far as efficiency goes. Since I had a general idea of what I wanted when I started, the tree was slowly altered as I leveled. Ideally, my tree should be looking like this:
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skil ... ptJDynXElR


Soon I'll be making a Scion that uses this build. The tree is solid so far, but I'd like to use 20% quality gems and alter the tree for more survivability. With 20% quality gems, I'll gain extra critical strike chance that I won't need to allocate points to get. Only so much critical strike is needed before it gets capped. With the bonus of the critical weakness curse, this can be achieved easily (+9% chance to crit at lvl 20, +10% at lvl 21).

I made this video because I wanted to show some friends what's possible in PoE (mostly people that are interested in PoE, but also some that are new to the game). Since I only intended to show this to certain people, it felt natural to remove it from the public search engine on YouTube.

P.S:
Do you still play a lot? My friend list is slowly growing now that I've started playing in parties more often. I'm playing this game as a "self found" player, so I use to only play single player.

Edit: I feel it's worth point out that when my life dropped to 400, I healed it back to full on an elemental reflect mob. I realize vaal pact naturally takes care of this, but I feel this shows the amount of survivability you can get in dense mob groups despite large amounts of damage you may take.

Re: Fun on Path of Exile

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 8:07 pm
by 3ICE
I've been playing, but it's been on and off. Went two weeks without touching the game recently.